The Fables of the better things we do
by agirlwithacoin
Summary: It seems like it might take years to clean everything out; the expulsion of her insides is a painful process, and she's not sure how long she languishes in shock and pain and bitterness, but the calendar feels like a liar-there ought to be a healing process, even if she itches to rip off the scab and be done with it.


Rating: PG-13

Category: Romance. Sort of.

Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Diaries, or any of the characters contained therein. I'm just borrowing them and doing things with them, because I use my time wisely.

Fandom: Vampire Diaries

Warning/Spoilers: 3x22

Pairing: Elijah/Elena

It's days later (it seems like it might take years to clean everything out; the expulsion of her insides is a painful process, and she's not sure how long she languishes in shock and pain and bitterness, but the calendar feels like a liar-there ought to be a healing process, even if she itches to rip off the scab and be done with it) before she's really able to focus on her surroundings. If she could find art on the scalpel's edge, she might feel some appreciation for what's happening, but her surroundings are too alien; her house has too many corners to it now that she doesn't belong there anymore.

The breaking point comes after her fall from grace, but before she's finished shucking her old skin; it is not intentional, and there is no plan behind her actions, but the heated rush of her body and the smell of exsanguination will remain with her until the day she dies. Her teeth extend; she had never imagined the pain of it, or the sweetness, but the memory will quiver in the dark parts of her soul for whatever eternity she can bank on. The taste is ambrosia on her tongue; saccharine, divine, and necessary to her continued existence. Death follows swiftly in her wake; she rips at the threads of life with her teeth, and when her victim is dead, remorse is immediate, intense, and worthless.

Too little, too late.

She finds him after, though it feels as if he finds her instead (she certainly needs him more than he needs her); she sullies his porch with her presence, shakes like a victim of assault (the irony escapes her, but later it will taste wretched on her tongue) and allows blood to leak between her teeth (Jam and toast breakfasts-the taste of raspberries-the memory comes white hot and sharp as a knife between her eyes) in her regret. Perhaps the feeling borders on despair, but words escape her, and she claws at her arms, remembering without speech a line from a famous play-a concept. Guilt never washes out.

She is blood and bones and violence; meat and mess, and rage, but she is also a whirlwind raging at the moon. She won't touch him, so he touches her-wraps her up like a child-strokes her hair and whispers to her in a language she doesn't understand because it has been dead for a thousand years. Words mean nothing to her anyway-she has been recycled and bleached beyond comprehension or recognition, and yet his voice calms her; she allows him to dab blood from her chin, lying apathetic in his arms, staring at a perfectly formed footprint in red, and wondering where the dark thing in his embrace had come from.

Words return later, though grief has scalded her-scarred her insides-beyond repair. She will never be Katherine, but she doesn't feel quite like Elena either, and clings to a bastion far more dangerous than anything raging outside its walls. The cavalry comes to collect her, but she digs in her heels (legs locked, skittish as an animal; she knows that without Elijah she won't retain herself-if anyone can keep her Elena-shaped it is him).

Months pass, and the brothers try to tear her into bits; she cannot stand their touch, and shies away from it as if burned. Perhaps running is in her DNA; she understands finally the thrill of fear that Katherine must have trailed behind her like perfume when she was a much younger woman. She interrupts him in his library, stares dark and swollen into his eyes, and asks him to spirit her away, knowing that it is stupid, and that he will do it. For her.

He cocks his head to the side, and doesn't ask if she loves those boys (her boys; maybe they belonged to her once, but that was a long time ago-everything was a long time ago-if she still loves them, she can't remember. They feel all wrong in her recollection, and seeing them is like staring at the sun), or if she's sure, or what she will do about Jeremy. His question is simple.

"Where do you want to go?"

She asks to go to Paris; instead he takes her to Arizona, up into the mountains, and while they look at a spatter of stars, and stare at the white road of the milky way in the sky, he tells her that this is what the world looks like in his memory. Elena says nothing, because she doesn't believe him; it is beautiful, and in her experience the world is cheap and tawdry, and there is no room for stars in her head. They stay until sunrise; the moon dances across the night, and dies on the horizon, but time seems to escape her these days, and Elijah has a gift for silence. The sky is boiling when he speaks again, and Elena watches blood bubble at the edges of the world, expanding into a rainbow that dulls to blue; her heart expands near to bursting, and she remembers the fragile, bird-like cry of the woman whose life she snuffed out like a flame.

"This doesn't have to be a bad thing. You can do anything you want."

He reminds her gently, and takes her hand. She doesn't pull away-her body is dissociated from everything she is, but she can't respond the way he wants her to, because she's trapped under glass. Her heart ruins itself; beats ragged and destructive as a bird trapped in a mason jar-Compassion, like flight ought to be a gift, but it shatters her and leaves nothing behind for her to take comfort in. She looks at him, and sees sadness where she'd missed it in the past; she remembers his letter, and thinks that maybe he's a little disappointed in her too-her humanity had connected them, and now it is gone forever.

"I can do anything except grow old, and die, and make the million choices that were supposed to be in front of me."

She tells him, and the bitterness is missing, as if she's misplaced it in transition. She isn't hollow-far from it, filled with teeth and barbs and sharp edges that wound her when she moves-but she doesn't know what to offer him, and somehow she hates that more than she hates herself.

He watches her with those dark eyes-delirium takes hold for a moment, and she thinks of the night sky, and the milky way reflected in his gaze; after a moment the reflection retreats behind his iris' like a school of fish swimming deeper into dark water-until she looks at him, and without smiling he tells her the truth, still holding her hand as if he owns it.

"Except for that."

His voice is gentle-he has always been gentle with her (relatively), but until this moment she hasn't stopped to appreciate it.

They go to Venice after two days in the desert, and though Elena has avoided public places since her mishap (Damon had named it thus, but to her it is murder, and the word weighs heavy on her bones. She has dreams about the dark thrill of feeding, the little shudder the woman's heart had made just before it stopped, and sometimes she wakes up gasping for air that is inconsequential), with Elijah she feels safe. The airport is crowded, and she desperately denies herself (no amount of penance will atone for her sin, but the horror of it drives her on like a tiger from the flames; she remembers what it was like to be burned), with his assistance.

He never reaches for her, but his hand is always there just when she needs something to hold (Just to make sure that she's still real-the feeling that she might fall away like so much ash plagues her constantly; she feels cracked and barely held together).

She finally disposes of her phone in a canal near a quaint but tired little restaurant on the water. Damon had taken to calling her incessantly (they all did; everyone in her life was buzzing around her, begging her to return, and they all care for her, but it's not enough. Elijah never asks for anything), and she is tired. Elijah doesn't comment until she returns to their little table.

"They only want what's best for you. They love you."

She doesn't know if he means the Salvatores, or her friends and it doesn't matter.

"I don't need to be loved. I'm tired of it."

He looks at her strangely, and for a moment, she wonders if perhaps she had come to the wrong place for that kind of escape. She grabs his hand under the table. Just to make sure she still can.

He lets her.

They walk along the water after dinner, and she blurts out (she's a teenager-she will never have his eloquence or his grace, and she's still plagued by time even if it no longer affects her) that she misses being human.

He says nothing.

She's not sure which he misses more; her humanity, or his own.

In Rome they sit side by side on a bench; Elijah makes it easy (she feels as if vampirism is a cancer-it eats her insides, tries to corrupt what she is, and coils in her guts, but he teaches her and she might be able to live with it), and though she can't feel his warmth and they don't touch, she thinks she might be happy.

"Ever since I found out…what I am, I've felt like I'm a life-ruiner. But I don't feel that way with you. Even before…all this."

She doesn't know how to tell him that while his presence reminds her constantly of what she is, he's taken the sting from the blow; they are vampires, and it is true that she has seen him at his worst, but he also reminds her that monsters need not be monstrous.

Elijah smiles, and takes her hand.

"Elena Gillbert, my life was ruined far before you came along."

She smiles, just a little, like sunshine breaking through the clouds.

In Paris, they go out at night (He twirls her in the half light; her laughter is full of sparks-they drink champagne, and she tastes the stars), and she stops feeling like a shadow (or a ghost; she can do all the things a real girl might-laugh, cry, dance or sing). In the midst of bubbles and fairy lights, she leans up to kiss him, and laughs into his mouth when he drops his flute of alcohol. She moves like a butterfly through the crowds, leaves joy behind her like a calling card, and weaves barefoot down the Champs Elysees because there is no one to stop her-she is freed from herself.

She is uplifted, though he's done nothing at all except stand beside her without uttering a word about compensation (With the Salvatores there is always a catch; she doesn't know why she is so sure of this, but they do not fill her with laughter and light as they once might have). He's not her warden, not her keeper, not her father, and this may never turn into a love story, but in Paris she realizes that if she is indeed still capable of love, she feels it for Prague she doesn't tell Elijah her secret, but she says something important anyway.

"I don't know what I want to do with my eternity…but I think I'd like you to be there."

It's not beautiful, or flowery, eloquent or poignant, but she looks up at him and thinks maybe her words are enough because they are true.

"Always."She takes his hand; Suddenly eternity doesn't seem so terrible.


End file.
